Head
Bering Sea, Alaska
200 BCE - 100 CE
marine mammal ivory
height: 3"
Inventory # E4047
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Provenance
Excavated by a native family on Punuk Island, adjacent to St. Lawrence Island, Alaska, in the summer of 2012.
Related Examples
Wardwell, Allen. Ancient Eskimo Ivories of the Bering Strait. New York: Hudson Hills, 1986, pg. 46, pls. 22 and 24
The Menil Collection, Houston, Texas – See : La Rime et La Raison, Ministere de la Culture (France), Editions de la Reunion des Musees Nationaux, Paris, 1984, pg. 214, Cat. No. 265
Deletaille, Emile. Schatten Uit De Nieuwe Wereld. Brussels: Musee Royaux d'Art et d'Histoire, 1992, pgs. 98-99
Two thousand years ago, from approximately 200 BCE to 100 CE, small coastal settlements appeared on St. Lawrence Island and the neighbouring Punuk Islands in the Bering and Chukchi Seas, off the coast of Alaska. This Bering Strait culture, commonly referred to today as the Okvik period or style, is considered the earliest of the known Old Bering Sea culture phases. The exceptional head seen above is exemplary of Okvik style. Hovering between abstraction and representation, the material is sculpted in the form of an elongated human head defined by arching eye-sockets extending into a long slender nose. Finely engraved eyebrows, set high on the forehead, lend a graceful expression that is counterbalanced by a small, downward-cast mouth. The subtlety of carving and reduction of details achieve a work of refined elegance, further enhanced by the smooth brown patina resulting from soil mineralisation. Although small in scale, the presence of this carving is monumental.